New Mexico State women open WAC play with home victory

LAS CRUCES- For the seventh-consecutive season, the New Mexico State women’s basketball team was able to kick off Western Athletic Conference play on the right foot, holding off a late Cal Baptist rally to defeat the Lancers 76-69 Thursday night inside the Pan American Center.

NM State led comfortably for most of the game but a 4-of-21 performance from the field to begin the second half allowed the Lancers to slowly chip away, closing the Aggie lead to as little as three with a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter.

As so often is the case, it took a play from senior forward Brooke Salas (20 points, 17 rebounds, moving up to sixth on NM State’s all-time career scoring list in the process) to snap the Aggies out of their cold spell. Salas’ steal and coast-to-coast drive that led to her knocking down both free-throw attempts got the Aggies’ offense going again, rebuilding their lead to eight on their next offensive possession with a Stabresa McDaniel 3-pointer.

The Lancers were unable to close the gap to a one-possession game from that point on.

“It’s a new year – it’s the 2019 WAC season and you have to set the tone and how did we want to start the year off?” NM State head coach Brooke Atkinson said, who is now 2-0 in WAC openers as the Aggies’ head coach. “We talked about it yesterday that our chapter in this book is waiting to be written. We are in the driver’s seat in what we want to do … great teams find a way to win games whether you are shooting well or you are not.”

McDaniel, a North Texas graduate transfer, came into the game averaging just 5.9 points per game but poured in a career-high 21 points to lead the Aggies on a night where the team’s second-leading scorer in Gia Pack fell seven points short of her season average.

The Dallas native shot 9-of-13 from the field and knocked down both of her 3-point attempts, closing the game scoring 10 of NM State’s 19 fourth-quarter points.

“Bre (McDaniel) has always had the ability to score it and I just talked with her two days ago and said ‘hey, I see you – you have done everything that I have asked, just continue to work yourself into the rotation’ and my issue with her is to make sure she is defending,” “I went back with one of my assistants and watched them and she has been pretty solid defensively.

“It has taken her time to get into it, but if you watch her, she is even keel – she doesn’t get too high or too low and that is the positive of having a graduate transfer with that kind of maturity.”

It was the first WAC game for new member Cal Baptist and the Aggies showed why it is NM State that is the class of the conference for the last four years, using the efficient offensive attack in the first quarter and a big advantage on the boards to create the early cushion that would end up being too deep a hole for the Lancers to dig out of.

The Aggies (9-5, 1-0 WAC) shot 43.5 percent in the opening frame and were able to find success rebounding on the offensive end, earning 12 offensive rebounds and finishing the game plus-16 in rebounding margin.